Particle physics is the study of what everything is made of

Particle Physicists study the fundamental particles that

make up all of matter, and how they
interact with each other.
Everything around us is made up of these fundamental
building blocks of nature.
In the early
1900's it was believed
that atoms were
fundamental;
they were thought to
be the smallest part of
nature and
were not made up of
anything smaller
Soon thereafter, experiments were done to see if this truly
was the case. It was discovered that atoms were not
fundamental at all, but were made up of two components:
a positively charged nucleus surrounded by a cloud of
negative electrons.
Then the nucleus was probed to see if
it was fundamental, but it too was discovered
to be made up of something smaller; positive
protons and neutral neutrons bound together
with the cloud of electrons
still surrounding it.
After that these protons and
neutrons were found it was time to
see if they were fundamental. It was
discovered that they were made up
of smaller particles called "quarks",
which today are believed to be truly
fundamental, along with electrons.
Furthermore, electrons belong to a
family of fundamental particles,
which are called "leptons". Quarks
and leptons, along with the forces
that allow them to interact, are
arranged in a nice neat theory named
the standard model
The Standard Model

The Standard Model is a theoretical

picture that describes
how the different elementary particles
are organized and
how they interact with each other along
with the different
forces. The elementary particles are
split up into two families,
namely the quarks and the leptons.
Both of these families consist
of six particles, split into three
generations, with the first generation
being the lightest, and the third the
heaviest. Furthermore, there are
four different force carrying particles
which lead to the interactions between
particles. The table below shows this all
a little bit more clearly.
 An interesting thing that has been discovered about
matter particles, is that each one has a corresponding
antiparticle. The term "anti" may be a bit deceiving, as
it is still real matter. The only difference between a
particle
and it's antiparticle is that an antiparticle has the opposite
electrical charge.
Think of it as a mirror image. Here left and right are
the only
things to reverse when looking in the mirror.
Similarly, in the particle world,
charge is what reverses when looking in the
"mirror". It's mass, spin and
most (quarks have something called color charge
which is also changed
in the "mirror") other properties are the same.
 In particle physics, Antimatter is the extension of the
concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is
composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal
matter is composed of particles. For example, an
antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge)
and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could
form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron
and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom.
Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter would lead to the
annihilation of both in the same
way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus
giving rise to high-energy photons or other particle–
antiparticle pairs
• A positron is the antimatter
equivalent of an electron. Like the
electron, the positron has a spin of ½,
and an extremely low mass (about
1/1836 of a proton). The only
differences are its charge, which is
positive rather than negative
(hence the name), and its
prevalence in the universe, which is
much lower than that of the electron.
Being antimatter, if a positron comes
in contact with conventional matter, it
explodes in a shower of pure energy,
bombarding everything in the vicinity
 Antimatter
• Almost every object observable from
the Earth seems to be made of matter
rather than antimatter. Many
scientists believe that this
preponderance of matter over
antimatter (known as
baryon asymmetry) is the result of an
imbalance in the production of matter
and antimatter particles in the early
universe, in a process called
baryogenesis
When particles of matter and antimatter collide they annihilate each other,

creating conditions like those that might have existed in the first fractions of a
This is where high energy accelerators come in. In head-on
collisions between high-energy particles and their
antiparticles, pure energy is created in "little bangs" when
the particles and their antiparticles annihilate each other and
disappear. This energy is then free to reappear as pairs of
fundamental particles,
e.g., a quark- antiquark pair, or an electron-positron pair, etc.
Now electrons and their positron antiparticles can be
observed as two distinct particles. But quarks and antiquarks
behave somewhat like two ends of a string — you can cut the
string and have two separate strings but you can never
separate a string into two
distinct "ends". Free quarks cannot be observed!
Just as in the Big Bang, if we can

manage to make high enough

temperatures,

we can create some pairs of quarks &

anti-quarks, by the conversion of

energy

into matter. (Particles & anti-particles

have to be created in pairs to balance

Quarks are a type of elementary particle and
are major constituents of matter. Quarks combine
to form composite particles called HADRONS, the
best-known of which are e.g. protons and neutrons
They are the only particles in the standard models
to experience the strong interactions addition to the
other three fundamental interactions fundamental
interactions, also known as
fundamental forces.
There are six types of quarks (plus their
six antiquarks),
which are coupled into three pairs. They
are the up-down, the
charm-strange, and the top-bottom
(sometimes known as truth-beauty).
Another interesting fact about quarks
is that you can never find one by Elect
itself, as they are always with other Mass ric
quarks arranged to form a composite Flavor (GeV/c2 Char
particle. The name for these composite ) ge
particles is "hadrons". Quarks, (e)
like protons and electrons, have u up 0.004 +2/3
electric charge. However, their electric d down 0.08 -1/3
charges are fractional charges, either
2/3 or -1/3 c charm 1.5 +2/3
(-2/3 and 1/3 for antiquarks), and they s strange 0.15 -1/3
always arrange to form particles
with an integer charge (ie. -1, 0, 1, 2...). t top 176 +2/3
b bottom 4.7 -1/3
Because quarks join with each other to form
particles with integer charge, not every kind of
combination of quarks is possible. There are two
basic types of hadrons. 1) baryons, which are
composed of three quarks, and 2) mesons which
are made up of a quark and an antiquark.
Two examples of a baryon are the neutron and
the proton. And of mesons +kaon, -kaon, pion
 The proton is composed of two up quarks and one down
quark.
As you can see, when the charges from the individual
quarks are
added up, you arrive at the familiar charge of +1 for the
proton

Elect
1proton charge= Mass
ric
Quarks Char
2u+1d= (GeV/c2)
ge
(e)
2*2/3 +
u up 0.004 +2/3
1*(-1/3)=+1 d down 0.08 -1/3
The neutron is made up of two
down quarks and one up quark.
Again, adding the charges from
the quarks up, we arrive at zero.

An example of a meson is the pion.

It is composed of an up quark and
a down antiquark. Because mesons
are a combination of particle and
antiparticle, they tend to be very
unstable and decay very quickly
Like quarks, there are six types of leptons, and again, in three pairs.

Electron - neutrino, muon - neutrino, and tau - neutrino (these three

neutrino's are different from each other). The electron, muon, and tau

each carry a negative

charge, whereas the three neutrinos carry no charge. Leptons, unlike

quarks,exist by themselves, and, like all particles, have a corresponding

antiparticle.
There are four fundamental forces in nature.

1. Electromagnetism

2. Strong

3. Weak

4. Gravity

These four forces all occur because

of the exchange of force carrier particles

Well, pretend you want to knock a
bird out of a tree 100 yards away. You
must exert a force to do this, but the
darn bird is out of your reach. So, you
take out a pitching wedge and a golf
ball, take a swing. If you're good
enough, you will successfully exert a
force on the bird and knock it down
from its perch, with the golf ball being
the force carrier.
Not all types of matter though are affected
by all force carrying particles.
For example, the proton and electron are
affected by the force carrier particle
of the electromagnetic force, the photon.
Electromagnetism is one of the two forces that dominate
our everyday lives (the other one being gravity). The words
you are reading radiating from your monitor are a result of
electromagnetism Theelectromagnetic force acts between
all particles that have electricharge. It is attractive for
oppositely charged particles, and repulsive for particles of
the same charge

F =kQq/r^2

Interaction b/t electron and electron

Interaction b/t electron and proton

The electromagnetic force gets weaker and weaker the further apart the particles are,

but it's range is infinite. The carrier of this force is the photon, most commonly observed

as light.

Another thing the electromagnetic force is responsible for is binding atoms together to

form molecules. Although most atoms have a net neutral charge, the positive charge from

within one atom can attract a negative charge within another atom, thus binding the two

atoms together. This is called the "residual electromagnetic force".

This is the force between quarks particles which is very
powerful, thus it is called the "strong force".
The strong force is strictly an attractive force which acts between
nucleons (protons and neutrons). It attracts any combination of
protons and neutrons. i.e.. neutrons attract neutrons, protons attract
neutrons... This is the force that overcomes the repulsive force within
an atom due to the electromagnetic force and holds the nucleus together.

The strong force actually acts between quarks, and

it's the residual strong force (similar to the residual
electromagnetic force) that causes nucleons to
attract. The carrier of this force is the gluon ((
elementary expressions of quark interaction, and
are indirectly involved with the binding of protons
and neutrons together in atomic nuclei. ))
All the stable matter in the universe appears to be made up
of one type of lepton (the electron) and two quarks (the up
and down), which compose the neutron and the proton.
However, there have been six types of each that have been
predicted and observed,
The reason why we don't observe these more massive quarks and
leptons is due to the weak force. It is the weak force that causes massive
leptons and quarks to decay into lighter leptons and quarks.
The weak forces have weak strength as 10^9

times less than that of the strong nuclear force.

The term nuclear indicates that it is a

short-range force, limited to distances smaller

than an atomic nucleus

Gravity acts between all particles that have mass. Mass will attract
other mass with a force that gets weaker as the distance between
them gets larger. Gravity is responsible for the large scale structure
of the universe. Here's a pretty picture of a galaxy, which, of course,
is held together by gravity.
Although gravity appears to be a very powerful force, when it comes
to things on smaller scales, like tiny particles, can be ignored because
of its weakness. The carrier of the gravitational force is the gravitron.
Although it has never been observed in experiment, it is strongly
believed to exist.

F = GMm/r^2
Modern versions of Rutherford's

table-top experiment on the scattering of

alpha particles occupy many square

kilometers of land, with massive and costly

apparatus in underground tunnels

tens of kilometers long. These are the

particle accelerators that speed protons, In an accelerator, focusing magnets and

bending magnets guide the beam of

antiprotons, electrons, or positrons to near
particles around a ring. (Only a few of the
the speed of light and then make
bending magnets are shown here). High
them collide head-on with each other or with
frequency microwave (RF) cavities
Beyond this, the Universe holds at least two dark secrets:

Dark Matter and Dark Energy!

The total amount of luminous matter (e.g., stars, etc.) is

not enough to

explain the total observed gravitational behavior of

galaxies and clusters of

galaxies. Some form of mysterious Dark Matter has to be

found. Below we will

see how new kinds of particles may be discovered that fit

the description. Recent

A Hubble Telescope photograph of galaxies deep in Universe
We believe that the Universe

started off with a "Big Bang", with enormously high

energy and temperature

concentrated in an infinitesimally small volume. The

Universe immediately

started to expand at a furious rate and some of the

energy was converted into

pairs of particles and antiparticles with mass—

leaving just a tiny fraction of matter to carry

on in the Universe. As the Universe

expanded rapidly, in about a hundredth of a

second it cooled to a "temperature“ of about

100 billion degrees, and quarks began to

clump together into protons and neutrons

which swirled around with electrons,

neutrinos and photons in a

grand soup of particles. From this point on,

there were no free quarks to be found. In the

next three minutes or so, the Universe

light nuclei such as deuterium, helium

and lithium. After about three hundred

thousand years, the Universe cooled

enough (to a few thousand degrees) to

allow the free electrons to become

bound to light nuclei and thus formed

the first atom. Free photons and

neutrinos continue to stream

Presented by

Sanjay Kumar